“A Disturbing Lesson in Paranoia”
That’s what Tim Rutten, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, says American children will be learning from the public hysteria about Obama’s planned speech to schoolchildren on Tuesday:
On Wednesday, Fox News devoted a substantial portion of one of its prime-time newscasts to a discussion of whether Obama is, in fact, trying to seduce schoolchildren to some darkly obscure personal agenda. The sole guest, a spokesman for the libertarian Cato Institute, reported that “we’ve gotten a lot of calls from people asking, ‘How do I keep my child from being indoctrinated?’ ”
On Thursday, Jim Greer, chairman of the Florida Republican Party, accused the president of attempting to “indoctrinate America’s children to his socialist agenda.” According to Greer, “the idea that schoolchildren across our nation will be forced to watch the president justify his plans for government-run healthcare, banks and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other president, is not only infuriating but goes against the beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power.”
The fact that Republican leaders and well-known public figures are leading the charge in this manner is, in my view, even more appalling than the parents who believe this stuff. They are the ones who should be injecting a note of reality and calming people down. They shouldn’t be encouraging it. Rutten quotes the president of a Texas school monitoring group (Kathy Miller):
“It’s hard to imagine anything more ridiculous than attacking the president of the United States for talking to students about the importance of getting a good education and being a good citizen,” said [...] Miller. … “I wish our elected leaders were responsible enough to denounce this kind of wild-eyed paranoia. But the problem is too many of them are actually feeding this kind of nonsense — like when the governor flirts with secessionists and state Board of Education members say the president sympathizes with terrorists.”
Miller has identified precisely the process at work in the healthcare hysteria and, increasingly, elsewhere where the GOP thinks it can shove the Obama administration into a ditch. Republican officials such as the Florida state chairman are playing a dangerous game with an unhinged segment of public opinion that regards Obama not as an elected official with whom they disagree, but as an illegitimate usurper of the presidency. [Emphasis added.]
That paranoid fantasy is what’s really behind the “birther” movement and the allegations that the president is — take your pick — a secret Marxist or a secret Muslim.
It’s the kind of fanciful anxiety that produces comments like this, posted on a conservative website this week: “Barack Obama and his left-wing Chicago machine regime are putting into place laws and institutions which will insure that there will never again be free elections in America.”
These are the people who are stockpiling ammunition and keeping their children at home next Tuesday.
25 Responses to ““A Disturbing Lesson in Paranoia””
Hysteria? Is that like calling your opponents a nasty word and implying the President is responsible for the deliberate death of thousands of Americans on 9/11? If you want to find paranoid hysteria, you can start by looking at Van Jones in the White House. He's on our payroll.
People seem to forget the purpose of public schools is not to educate by consensus of the local demagoguery
http://bradstinyworld.com/5688/purpose-public-s…
Listening to Beck again DaMav?
Cheer up Kathy… The silence for the right side of this room in the last several posts speaks volumes.
It seems that the reasonable (and mostly reasonable
folks on the right realize that this is a non-issue and that the ignorant foolishness of those trying to make it an issue makes all of them look bad (worse?).
They're distancing themselves by keeping silence… More would be nice but just seeing them put a little pressure on their wacko fringe is an improvement.
At lest Jones isn't a convicted felon on the payroll. DaMav, where were you then?
So signing one petition when the administration was fighting against an investigation of the worst terrorist attack on this country in our history is equivalent to being a nutcase?
No wonder people don't remember what life was like under Reagan with any consistency. The records are out there. Review before commenting.
Oh, and GWB had convicted felons on the taxpayer paid payroll. You're ok with that, DaMav?
SteveK, silence is the same as consent. If one were against something or didn't like it one would speak up. Hopefully. If one did not speak up and the idiots prevailed they would be responsible to some degree…. Not directly, but they did have a chance to speak up and stand up to the idiots. Yet they chose not to.
“Silence is the same as consent.”
Well, that's one theory. Silence might also be a sign that the issue is too manifestly silly to dignify.
Seriously, if it were everyone's job to issue a position statement on everything Fox News saw fit to broadcast…well, I'm sure they'd enjoy the ratings boost.
It seems that the reasonable (and mostly reasonable
folks on the right realize that this is a non-issue and that the ignorant foolishness of those trying to make it an issue makes all of them look bad (worse?).
Or that this horse has been beaten to death.
But actually I agree with you Steve. Although there were some legitimate concerns about the lesson plan, in general the GOP leadership and talking heads are acting like buffoons.
Actually I've been listening to Van Jones spew his hysterical paranoia. It's not hard to do. Apparently the White House vetting team hasn't yet discovered Google.
DaMav,
Is Van Jones's “hysterical paranoia” any more absurd than that of Bob McDonnell?
SteveK, silence is the same as consent.
I agree with Stock Boy on this one.
Part of me does too, BUT…
Here's another way to think about it, Steve. If liberals and Democrats were calling for parents to boycott schools and accusing the president of mind control and Stalinism and all sorts of deranged accusations like that over something as “manifestly silly” as this, do you think the right would remain mostly silent because it was “manifest silliness” on the Democrats' part?
One hysterical paranoid under the bus. Good for Obama. If he continues to clean house of the loonies he could regain some of the credibility he's lost. Not holding my breath but at least this is a piece of good news for the nation.
” do you think the right would remain mostly silent”
Kathy if you are not holding yourself to a higher standard that a group you belittle, insult, and dismiss on a daily basis then why should anyone pay any attention to you?
The Truther BS is just a talking point. Seems many signatories were duped. And this is from those Wingnut traitors at LGF.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/34594_T…
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/34592_V…
Van Jones, Rachel Ehrenfeld, Rabbi Michael Lerner and Howard Zinn are not Truthers.
EEllis– No one is saying that all conservatives deserve to be belittled — but at least some of those on the far right do. After years of remaining silent while we invaded the wrong country, turned the surplus into an enormous deficit and violated international law and our own Constitution, they feel justified in creating controversy where there should be none.
The birthers, the tenthers, the secessionists, and now those who are threatening to keep their kids at home rather than have them exposed to a 15 minute speech by the President of the US, who merely wants to tell kids to work hard and stay in school so that they can be in control of their own future.
Isn't that the conservative message?
Who are you trying to convince kritt? Kathy belittles any and everything even vaguely conservative. She is as partisan as it gets and she wants to justify behavior by saying “the people I trash everyday do it”. Then it's the greatest hypocrisy to try and claim some moral high ground. That's what I referenced and you responded with what? Nothing but that some conservative deserve belittling. So? So do more than a few liberals, was there a point there?
I don't know what paying attention has to do with it. If nobody paid any attention to Van Jones, he'd still have his job.
“I don't know what paying attention has to do with it.”
So you're what, a blogger who doesn't want people to read her blogs? Or is it that you don't think it's hypocrisy to belittle something while doing the equivalent? Maybe hypocrisy is good? You're bitching about the pigs, maybe it's because there isn't enough room in the pen for all of you.
Perhaps you could tell me what I belittled while doing the equivalent?
Also, are you calling me a pig?
“Perhaps you could tell me what I belittled”
The “right” as you called it and you do so every chance you get. You are dismissive, insulting (literary calling people stupid, ignorant, ect), and belittling.
“doing the equivalent”
Over reacting, being hypersensitive, partisan. Yep
“are you calling me a pig?”
Are you kidding?
I'm really a gentle person, eellis. With gentle people, that is.
You do get civility points for editing out that sentence you had after “Are you kidding?” I had a snide reply to it, but since it did not appear in the final comment as posted here, I will refrain.
Kathy, lying about (more) intelligent and moral people's concern about activism in the schools, federal encroachment, the Obama personality cult, and stooping to anything that can help recover the failed health care effort doesn't help with your own long-needed recovery efforts.
Did you get your autographed pink beret to wear and match your top yet, Ms. Pink Panther?
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BPBojSYFPDw/RlvbZDdMU…
“SteveK, silence is the same as consent. If one were against something or didn't like it one would speak up.”
Have no fear. The Obama administration was among those (like Kathy) slandering and otherwise mischaracterizing the opposition to numerous improper things Obama and the lib Dems in the Congress have been doing this year, in an attempt to silence or at least sideline any speaking-up.